Fallout London Review: Pound for Pound, Fallout is better across the Atlantic

Fallout London is arguably the boldest modding project in existence. Forgotten City or Enderal represent the pinnacle of what can be considered a 'mod' with their ambitious scale. By comparison, Fallout London is bold for a relatively unique reason: the heavy responsibility of portraying a first-ever look into Fallout outside America.

Sailing into the great unknown, this total conversion project had the challenge of building a fallen London from scratch - a burden both binding and liberating. 20 hours into the game, I am certain the gambit has paid off. This is not a mere 'Fallout mod'—it is its own game that deserves to be canonized among mainline titles.

Fallout London is everything that Bethesda shies away from

Fallout London goes its own way (Image via Team FOLON)

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Fallout London doesn't just obliterate the old Boston map to make way for a new England, but it also scraps the direction Bethesda Game Studios has taken with the franchise.

Before I sound disparaging, let me preface this by saying I love Fallout 4 for what it's worth. Its technicolor Masachussets was a self-contradictory wonderland we loved to explore a decade ago, but Team FOLON leaves this design philosophy at the Boston harbor.

Instead of Bethesda's tendency to give you the license to explore a great wide world, Fallout London embraces the 'hardcore' nature of the classic Fallout games. It does not lead you by the nose towards a Power Armor powertrip an hour into the campaign. Instead, it charts the deliberately measured rags-to-riches curve we expect of an old-school RPG.

Familiar beginnings and unfamiliar beasts

The first reward you get is a 'noif' (Image via Team FOLON)

Fallout London opens with the familiar origin point of a Bethesda game: a prison-break sequence with help from a mysterious benefactor. But it doesn't hold your hand after that. Figuratively, it does not railroad you toward anything. It's the treacherously hard word around you that forces you back on the beaten path.

London is not fit for a summer stroll, it needs an enterprising roughneck of a player character to rise to the occasion. You punch yourself out of a glass cage to start the game. Soon after, you'll need to punch your way out of insidious rodent invasions.

The Radshrews look like tiny milquetoast creatures, but they can poison you to death if you try to walk past them. If you don't go out of your way to find it, the entire tutorial dungeon does not give you starting weapons.

This sets the lesson plan for the rest of the game, where its all-original mutant roster serves a very functional purpose of course correction. Just having a high Endurance stat in Fallout London won't bail you out if you get swarmed by Mangy Foxes out in the streets, so proceed cautiously.

The long way around, and then the long way back

The claustrophobic boroughs of London often wall off what seem like straightforward paths to your objective. You will run into inconvenient brick ramparts forcing you to walk laterally. To a player used to how open Fallout 4 is, this takes some getting used to.

What seems like an inconvenience again works in the game's favor in the long run. Fallout London takes the right cues from Obsidian's Fallout New Vegas. It teases you with the outlines of London City on the horizon. You can jump into the Thames and swim to it - except the irradiated river deals a bazillion Radiation damage per second.

Mo Minutemen, Mo Problem

The opening is slow, but not ponderous. Instead of handing you everything at once, new game elements are drip-fed methodically. There's no base-building sandbox out of the gate, and you have to ration your carry weight carefully lest you lug around too much junk.

Some select setpieces have the Return to Castle Wolfenstein vibe (Image via Team FOLON)

Once you hit the three-hour mark, though, progression is well-paced. You will eventually hit your stride and lug around multiple weapons, and it will feel more deserved. This also takes away the burden of freedom, so to speak. You can completely ignore the junk-dismantling side of Fallout for a more authentic wasteland scavenging experience, dumpster-diving for Rad-X, and food to heal up.

The Great British Fallout bakeoff

Fallout London's biggest achievement is standing toe-to-toe with Bethesda's strongest suit: making a good open world. It builds one of the best lifelike impressions of the iconic real-life city in gaming. From the soot-laden half-timbered slums and withered tube stations to the Victoriana of Westminster streets, this game almost overtakes Assassin's Creed Syndicate.

Fallout London makes for a whimsical reimagination of the iconic city (Image via Team FOLON)

Making a post-apocalyptic English metropolis is only half the battle - but Team FOLON fleshes it out with well-conceptualized Fallout paraphernalia. This is another regard where Fallout London is a full departure from established facets.

It ditches the Vault Boy and other in-world Americanisms to instead coin its counterparts. The Attaboy is no mere off-brand Pipboy. Fallout London's UI creates its own charm through 70's arcade audio-visuals and stick figures that grow on you.

The icon is quite damning (Image via Team FOLON)

To retain the sardonic Fallout magic, alt-history London is jam-packed with unabashed references to British pop culture references and in-jokes - from Cherry Bakewells to Horse Meat (pointed towards the Tesco Value Burger debacle).

A special note has to be addressed to the weather and lighting. Fallout 4 has its signs of visual aging, but Team FOLON has done a great job with the tech at hand. The drizzle-prone weather bears remarkable verisimilitude, while the interiors engaged me with its dramatic use of dynamic shadows.

This game probably won't need ELFX (Image via Team FOLON)

The Factions

Fallout London does not play on parlor tricks and quirks to sell its world, or its functionally sound guns, for that matter. This does not imply it lacks those zany, out-there moments that make Fallout what it is. The biggest crutch in this regard is the factions, which are even more interesting than New Vegas' Roman Legion LARPers.

After beating up average English hooligans for a few hours, I ran into a brazenly goofy faction. The henchmen so far were standard Peaky Blinders street gangs, but the Jack Tar is where things get interesting. These are privateers turned cults, and they drag entire ships into the middle of their bases to make a fortress out of them.

If you want a truly wild experience, take the Sleepwalking trait. My first character (whom I eventually abandoned) took this trait, thinking it was quirky enough to make things spicier. After waking up from my first post-crash nap (light spoilers), I ended up in a Beefeater (cannibal) cabin where I fought tooth and claw with two Ghouls and a Bloatfly.

Thinking this is as 'sandboxy' as it gets, I stepped out into the night, only to bump into a postbox that came to life as a Post-Boxer and chased me down the streets. I was bailed out by a Protectron, which gunned it down to cull the metal gear threat. Then, it gunned me down for being too silly.

The Royal Mail is not here to chat (Image via Team FOLON)

Does Fallout London combat do anything differently?

The core of the gameplay loop remains the same as Fallout 4 (or any other Bethesda Fallout). The difficulty curve is more unforgiving early on, though. It is similar to the Jsawyer mod for New Vegas or Requiem for Skyrim, but not as hardcore or complex. In effect, it incentivizes VATS more in the tense moments and makes it more enjoyable overall.

The bells and whistles are also lifted out of Fallout 4: loot stuff off recently slain enemies, then mod out the war spoil in workbenches. There are various objects you can break down into raw materials and utilize crafting to prepare for a tough dungeon dive. There's Syringer ammunition, a cheap source of DoT to loosen up tough targets, and per-limb armor options to gain more damage resistance.

On Survival, which is now its own difficulty mode option, you have to rely on all of these systems. On Normal, you can get by just fine without doing all this homework.

The dents of an almost-professional Fallout game

I have not played the game long enough to give a thorough verdict. In my playtime so far, I am fairly certain I will have a positive outlook on the game, but there are a few limitations I should address.

The only aspect where the game feels like a mod is the sometimes inconsistent voice-acting. Fallout London has a few big-league voice actors working in cameo roles, but the bulk of the community voice work is of professional quality. This makes it all the more jarring in the few cases where it feels out of place.

While the game engages Fallout's hardcore CRPG roots, it also comes with some downsides. Fetch-quests framed by reasonable pretexts are still fetch-quests, so ranking up your reputations with the factions may feel grindy at times. This would have been fine on its own, but the long load times exacerbate things.

The game is logically more cohesive than the wanton narrative of Fallout 4, but there are some lapses in the writing. You start with two permanent debuffs from the traumatic events you are put through in the beginning. These are 10% debuffs to damage taken and damage dealt, and you need to find some way to cure them.

These feel like good hooks to create momentum until one of them gets resolved rather unceremoniously by the first doctor you run into. Bromley's local medic, Yvette, taps her (possibly used) syringe twice, which identifies your 'Railway Spine' as "some kind of psychological distress, probably brought on by the crash." Anyways, it's been cured now through voodoo medical practice; begone with ye.

This kind of stilted explanation is not a one-off in Fallout London's quest writing, but they are few and far between. It would be nitpicky of me to expect a spotless experience—for a free-to-play mod, it's exceptionally high-quality.

What did walmart Piper mean by this? (Image via Team FOLON)

This brings me to the other aspect where it seems apparent it's a mod (and a Bethesda game, at that). To be fair, many of its instabilities can be written off as part of the famously crash-prone Bethesda engine. However, at the time of writing, this nature holds many players back from an otherwise phenomenal Fallout experience.

The CTD-prone nature can be remedied with Buffout 4, Weapon Debris Fix, and a handful of other stability mods. That's not the end of it, though. If you are playing it at its current state, you will more than likely face some record scratches.

Some of these bugs will have you reload the save or restart a game, while the more game-breaking ones may require tinkering under the bonnet. I had to resort to console commands on two occasions to get past quest hurdles because a character would zone out, or a scripted scene would not play out. These were not deal-breakers for me personally, but if you expect a bug-free experience, you may need to wait a while till formalized Fallout London hotfixes get shipped.

Early Impression: Is Fallout London Good?

An emphatic yes. Fallout London is a masterclass in what made the classic Fallout games tick, and why Fallout New Vegas is considered an RPG classic. While the technical issues are a flaming hoop that will deter most players, the effort is easily worth it.

This is a review-in-progress, and I have yet to beat the main quest or get my first Power Armor (if it exists). My intention with this early review was to highlight the art direction, narrative structure, gameplay beats, and what to expect in the first few hours of Team FOLON's run at Fallout in Europe. Based on these, Fallout London is a game I'd gladly wait in line for.

Check back later for our full review, where I'll look into quest design, the endgame build variety, and the plot for a more well-rounded verdict.